Sunday, 31 March 2013

What should have been a triumphant homecoming for AKB0048 has proved to be anything but, as their return to the planet sees them vilified as cowards and traitors rather than celebrated as the heroes of days past.

This certainly isn't the way things were supposed to go, in turn threatening to send their entire plan to take back Akibastar into turmoil. Having witnessed their own fans turn against them, it takes all that they have for the girls to gather up their confidence and carry on regardless in the fact of this hostility, but in doing so their determination slowly but surely begins to win over the crowd. It's Nagisa who finally makes the breakthrough however as the crowd's anger shows no sign of abating, with her own belief in the music and entertainment that she loves seeing her channel Acchan to such a great extent that it turns the crowd around almost instantly.

Of course, even with this sealed, and in spite of the return of Yuuko after her earlier disappearance, there's still the small matter of DES to deal with, and once Chieri goes Centre Nova their interest in proceedings becomes all the more intense. Rather than weapons, it's with music that the girls look to drive their opponents away; something that proves to be highly successful at this new peak of their powers, meaning that Akibastar is saved and a new, most potent singing combination is born at the heart of AKB0048.

Come the end of the series, I think it's fair to say that AKB0048, and this second season in particular, have proved to be much better than they perhaps had any right to be - much if not all of its premise is daft, and it's clearly heavily driven as a marketing vehicle for AKB48, but at times it manages to transcend this to provide some really great material. Certainly, this didn't happen week in and week out, but some of its strongest moments were downright magnificent within Next Stage especially, and the overall journey encompassed by the show proved to be a mostly satisfying one. It's no Macross Frontier, but as a pretender to that throne (and let's not pretend that it isn't) it's still a pretty respectable effort.